


Storybook Prince

by mll



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Chrom!Inigo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-22 22:37:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2524205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mll/pseuds/mll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inigo could never quite manage to become who he was supposed to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Storybook Prince

**Author's Note:**

> A birthday gift for my buddy Doc (rightfulkinginigo.tumblr.com)! She wanted Inigo angst and that was something I enjoyed delivering

Inigo had always had in the back of his head the idea that, in some alternate universe out there, being a prince was supposed to be easier. That was what all the stories his mother had told him as a boy had been about—a dazzling young child of the crown ready and willing to protect his kingdom at a moment's notice with a smile on his face. The figure of royalty his parents had intended him to embody.

He couldn't really remember how any of the stories had ever ended, whether the prince ever got tired of constantly smiling, so Inigo had just figured that was how his own story was meant to be: unceasing.

But it was okay if the prince never got to stop fighting, because he had never been the main character of this story to begin with. Inigo couldn't remember a time when he hadn't known that he was only Lucina's shy younger brother. She who wielded Falchion, he who danced alone in the backwoods. A resolute, divine leader of a princess, a playboy for a prince. She who grieved for their lost father every day of her life, he who had only ever seen the man in paintings.

It was an easy enough dichotomy. Whenever he allowed himself to think about what lay ahead of him on every tomorrow of his life, the outcome typically wasn't pretty so it was really for the best that Lucina take charge. She could handle it, she always would, and everything would turn out alright in the end no matter how much waste they had to wade through to get there. Even if _he_ wasn't fine, the least he could do was smile.

So even now living in this world's safe, idyllic little past, he could think of no reason that he would ever want to wield Falchion. If Lucina ever died and it turned out he was the only one around who could use it, that would make him the world's last line of defense. He, chosen solely by birthright, would be forced to once and for all turn himself into the the storybook prince he was supposed to be. All just because he was his father's son and his sister's brother.

But although he had managed to sidestep all potential responsibility through a rare gift of mercy from Lucina, Inigo had found himself picking Falchion back up. Maybe out of curiosity, or an inculcated reluctance to give up on something so easily. He'd been raised to believe that no degree of effort was ever enough, after all—a side effect of growing up during an apocalypse. Whatever reason it was, he'd swung it anyway, like a proper prince of the realm would.

“...Yup. Not a scratch.”

It was too late to embark on any more stories he didn't know the ending to.


End file.
